Strength
by The-Lady-Isis
Summary: SeiferxQuistis. There comes a time when even knights need rescuing. DON'T OWN.
1. Breaking

**Breaking**

Seifer was on his knees.

He was dying, right there on the sea shore, the waves the only steady thing in his otherwise dizzyingly-spinning mind. It was all gone. She'd come along, and...taken him apart. Taken what he offered in faith and smashed him open, mind and body and soul to see what it was inside him that made him think he was worthy to be hers.

And, Hyne, he'd wanted to be. He'd wanted to be hers _so much_, craved her mental caresses, longed for her physical touch. She'd called him a boy. He had been. She'd taken him with the promise of making him a man. Instead she'd broken him. Squeezed him in her taloned hands until he splintered like rotten wood.

Now he was nothing at all.

The waves came in again. In, out. In, out. In. Out. In. Steady. Rhythmic. Calming.

Ha.

He didn't understand what the word calm meant anymore. The last time he'd felt calm was resting in her soothing psychic embrace, crooning words of madness and pride in his ear. A restful, drugged haze, filled with the euphoria of insanity. She was heaven and hell, fire and ice. Opium.

She'd put her sweet fanged mouth to his and drained the strength from him. He could still hear her mad voice echoing in his ears. "Bleed for me..." she trilled. "Bleed for me..."

And the gods help him, he had. Everything he had he'd bled into her.

How had this _happened? _

Of course, he knew how it had happened. His greatest weakness. He needed to be loved. He needed to have someone look at him and see pride and faith shining in their gaze.

Ultimecia had given him that – but it was madness in hers. Bile and hope had risen in equal measures whenever he was around her.

And Seifer had bound himself to her too late. Too late to see that the one he should have been looking at...was still looking at him. Through a halo of blonde hair and twin oceans of cerulean. Too late, because it was only by the hurt and the betrayal and the bitter wound in her eyes that he knew she loved him.

At the exact same moment he knew she didn't anymore.

She was dying...because he had never looked at her. Every blow she dealt to him cost her more than it cost him. In the moment he'd realised that what he'd always sought was in his grasp all along, he stopped caring about anything else. Screw Garden, fuck Balamb and sod the rest of the world. How could he care about anything now...apart from mending the heart he'd broken?

That was where it all went horribly wrong. Turned out that Ultimecia wasn't happy about the idea of her knight abandoning her for another woman. The softly stroking hands turned into grasping claws digging barbs into his flesh. She'd almost made him as mad as she was.

Though right now, the last tenuous strands of his sanity fraying away, it did seem as though she'd succeeded. Some knight. All his strength was gone. He was the one who needed saving – and badly.

He wasn't aware of speaking the words, and his own hoarse voice, tinged with madness, surprised him. "Quistis. _Help _me."


	2. Saving

**Saving**

Quistis was walking.

She didn't know why she was walking, or even where she was walking to. All she knew was that in the middle of the celebration ball, she'd heard it. There were no words – only an emotion laden summons that spoke to her soul. She'd actually dropped the glass of champagne she was holding – not that alcohol was really helping her current mood – and pressed a hand to her chest, clutching at her heart. The sharp tinkling of broken glass had alerted her friends to the happening of the whatever it was. When asked what was wrong, Quistis couldn't say. She didn't know. She just knew that someone, somewhere, needed her help.

The call beckoned her out of Garden and down to the Centra shore. They'd stopped by the Orphanage to pick up Edea, and Garden had settled its great bulk there for the present. She wandered among the stone ruins, stopping outside the main doors for a moment, thinking.

She wasn't a spiritual person, but for the summons to affect her heart like that – it had to be coming from someone she loved. But everyone she loved was at the party. No, that wasn't quite right. The people who may as well have been her parents were there. Her brothers and sisters were there. Her friends were. The man she loved – the man she had always loved – wasn't.

Quistis didn't cry at the thought of him. She was stronger than that.

All her life she'd been strong. No, strong wasn't a _strong _enough word for what she was. The last time she'd cried was at five years old, being driven away from the people and the place she loved by people she didn't know, she didn't love or care about. She knew what they offered, she knew that what all orphans longed for was within her grasp – and she hadn't cared. She was taught how to be strong that day.

Taught by the boy who had never cried. Even at five he was tough – lean and quick and wiry. He'd learnt in turn the lesson of strength from his father's fist. He taught Quistis in the only way he knew how – showed her he loved her in the only way he understood love. Goading, pushing, poking, provoking, angering, upsetting, _breaking_ – he tried all the methods he could think of to ensure that this precious, peerless, perfect golden little girl wasn't shattered. Or more accurately, wasn't shattered by anyone except him. It wasn't until years later, when she'd seen him and remembered him with a clarity that even Guardian Forces could not dim, that she had understood. He'd broken her...to make sure that no one else ever could.

She stopped, then. That was it. She couldn't be broken. "Oh Hyne, Seifer."

She ran, then. She ran from the Orphanage down to the white stretch of sand by the ocean. Her lungs were heaving, her muscles were burning and her heart was still calling out his name desperately.

The sound of her pounding footsteps on the sand alerted the dark shape huddled on the beach to her presence. He looked up with an expression of such desperation on his face that Quistis increased her speed. She skidded to her knees beside him, gathering him into her arms as she might a child, and smoothing his hair back and pressing kisses on his face and letting her tears cleanse him of his.

He was muttering mindlessly, endlessly in terror. "Quistis...help me I can't...she's in my _head, _won't leave, I'm not _strong _enough..."

"Shhh...Hush, my darling... She's gone. I promise you she'd gone. I'm here. It'll be alright, Seifer." She lifted his face to hers again, and kissed him, passionate and dedicated and fiery and _strong_. She let him know that she'd always be there, come hell or high water. She hugged him tighter, and felt his arms recover enough strength to wrap around her, too, and knew. Her words were true.

She looked out across the starlit ocean. "It'll be alright."

She'd saved him.


End file.
